All posts by sheenmeem

I made a cartoon on my previous blog and I was worried. You will ask why? Simply because my sister is a stickler for truth. She will be at you like a dog gnaws at a bone, if she notices a slight discrepancy in what you say or do.

That cartoon was based on a friend, who visited after a gap of eight years.

My sister and I discovered each other later in life. She was away living with grandma. When she joined us (father and the other siblings) Baba (our father) passed away. We were together at uncle’s house, but I was busy with exams and got married soon after I finished.

We took baby steps towards each other in the ensuing years. I can say that now we are friends. We got to know each other. Unlike me, she dresses beautifully. She looks immaculate even after a twenty-four hours long flight. I wonder how she does it? In comparison, I look like a scarecrow. She cooks like a dream. Her house remains tip top. Sadly, she suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and is heroically battling it.

ME

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

Time passes so quickly. Babies you saw in their mothers’ arms suddenly are adults somehow. Last October, my sister came for condolences from US. She couldn’t make it to the funeral of my husband. While making the rounds of shops (she wanted some dresses) I caught sight of myself in a mirror. A haggard old person looked back at me. I was startled at myself while looking at the apparition. Few months had passed, but for a person who had looked years younger now looked years older.

What a change!

Share this:

Like this:

In our society some people tend to go the mazars. Mazars are tombs of holy or pious men. They go there to pray to God to help them. In realty most of them, the ignorant ones pray directly to the dead person buried there to help them and take away their woes. They think it is a panache for all ills. They will be sick. Instead of going to the doctor they find it easy to go visit the the last abiding place of some holy person.

Once a road was being widened near Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar. Along the side of the road a person was buried a long time ago. The tomb was festooned with a lot of little colorful flags as is usual here. The person in charge ordered that the tomb should be erased and the remains buried in a cemetery. A lot of hue and cry was raised. The grave was opened despite that. A long stick was found instead of the skeleton. Somebody wanting to mint money had built that fake mazar. People visiting give gifts of money and food.

There is a mazar in Lahore which is very famous, the mazar of Hazrat Data Gunj Bahksh. Many people go there for their prayers to be answered. I pity the poor chap. Imagine day and night the ding dong (music) going on. I think if he could, he would have run away from that place.

One of my husband’s relative was suffering from breast cancer. Instead of going to the doctor, she kept visiting a mazar in Swat in the hope of getting well. After she became more ill she went to a cancer specialist. It was too late. How can a dead person grant you a wish? His own account closed at the time of his death. May be he was a good person, but who answers prayers from the grave?

I see so many of our ‘Great Leaders’ going to such places. They are the death knell of our country. They have only brought chaos to our homeland. Why don’t they directly pray to God ? There was a photo of President Zardari in the newspaper visiting the mazar of Lal Shebaz Qulander. Probably he was praying for a second term. I hope and pray to God his wish is not answered. He and his cronies are done with.

It’s really ironic that in this age educated people are so naive as to believe in the power of dead people of long ago.

Usually my evenings are spent watching those shows which I like. I am in luck when there is no load shedding of electricity which is a common occurrence here.
I do my cooking at this time. Cooking bores me now and it’s repetitive, so while I do my cooking I watch my favorite TV shows if they are on. My pet dislikes are ads. I know they are a necessity. If there weren’t any ads the shows won’t run. I have noticed whenever a show is popular more ads are there.
I wish the ad people would come out with more interesting ads so that we don’t get bored with them. I think they should change them frequently too, like the coke ads. Some are so bad you dread watching them. I wish they come out with more innovative ideas so that (unfortunately) when I have to watch them I won’t take out huge chunks of hair from my already thinning patch in despair.
There is the milk ad. You are told if you add it to your tea it will be marvelous. You are bound to say, “What is wrong with that?” The thing which jars me is their prancing about. If they had done it imaginatively it wouldn’t look so cheap. Then there is the cream ad. A lovely lady with a smile tells you to use it. Somehow I doubt that lady using it on her arms and legs. If we did I am sure most of us will start resembling gorillas, because the non-existing hair will also come out for a breath.
Now the meat cubes ad! This one tells you to add it to your veggies. The cubes will make you feel you are having meat. What a choice! While the cost of meat is spiraling up and the currency is going down (thanks to our govt.) the cubes will do the trick and that at a steep price too.
Next in line is the cellular ad. You are told to spend a lot of bucks every day to get a shiny new car. It is your money which is being spent, not theirs. If they had such big hearts they would have given you a lower price of their phone package instead of minting you for money. They lure you with the tune that the more you spend; you will have a better chance of winning.
The one I like is where the sale person has a drink and he dances to get the escalator moving. To come back to my original bone of contention, I hate it when I am bored to death and would like to see a movie, there are so many ads linked to it I end up not seeing it. They waste your time. You start feeling sleepy and to keep awake you start munching this and that. Normally I give up and go to sleep.
Being starved for entertainment we are forced to watch such ads. My escape route is either to switch off or surf while the program takes a break.

Dear Allah, I wanted to thank you. You have given me, an insignificant human being, a mere speck in this world, a lot of things. Some are those, for which I asked, and some those, which you bestowed upon me without my asking. “You are my One, True God.”

You made me whole giving me eye sight, the gift of hearing and the use of my limbs. You have given me good health. Masha-Allah. You have given me shelter in the house I live. Suppose I was on the streets without a roof over my head, how would have I fared?

You give me my daily food, all the things I like to eat. There are so many people out there in the world, who go without food and remain hungry. You have given me drinkable water, clear and sweet. Without it I would not have survived.

You gave me a father, who was kind and lovable.

You gave me a husband, who loved me and looked after me, till death took him away.

You gave me two children, who are the best in this world.

I can mention a whole lot of things. It’s endless. You are Merciful, Kind and Great.

You gave me everything I wished for. I remember once I wanted cherries to eat and there were none in sight. H came from the office, bearing a box of cherries. I was amazed and delighted, “How did you get it?”

“A friend sent it from Quetta.”
I confessed, “This morning I was wishing for cherries.” He laughed and said, “You should have wished for something better.” And this happened a lot of times. Whenever I wished for cherries, I got them.

I love Lichees. Dear God, you gave me trees full of Lichees in my own home, where I can have them to my heart’s content. The many times I yearned for a thing, I got it.

Dear Allah, I thank you for all you have given me. I know I cannot thank you enough, for the kindness and infinite mercy you have shown me. I love you God. Please forgive me for my shortcomings. Please bear with my one wish now, and let it come true. “Dear God, save me from hell, and give me a place in your Heaven, when I leave this world for my ever lasting home. Amen.”

Before learning the Quran, a person has to start with a preliminary book called the Qaida. This has the Arabic alphabets (28 in all) plus the different shapes of the alphabets when they are joined. A religious teacher makes you learn their different sounds. After finishing the Qaida, you start with the Quran.

Normally, parents start with their children at an early age. They hire a teacher who can come and spend time with the child to make him or her learn. Now times are different. It’s easy to connect to a teacher via internet. My learning started at the age of three. A maid servant would accompany me to a nearby mosque. My lessons were thrice a week. I used to dread going there. The moulvi sahib (religious teacher) would be punishing boys left and right (I was the only girl there). Though he was never harsh with me, it was scary for me. Fortunately, my father got posted from that area so my learning came to a stop.

After a longer period, I started again with a lady teacher. My mother would send me to her house twice a week. This lady was a smiling sort of a woman. I don’t think I learnt a great deal from her. After my mother died and I shifted from uncle’s house to live with my father, my school started. Father hired another moulvi sahib to come in the evenings daily, except for weekends. I would be tired from school and homework, and there would come the moulvi sahib. I resented him a lot. Why? Because he would make me recite the Holy Book over and over (there was no escape from it) and my elder brother Lala would go scot free after a few minutes of his lessons. I would be sitting for hours on end (to me the time looked endless) and wanting to go and play.

One day I got so fed up with my teacher I threw my sipara (one of the thirty parts of the Quran) down on the floor. It was a terrible thing to do. I expected dire punishment from him, but he calmly told me to pick it up and went on with the lesson. I don’t exactly remember when I finished learning the Quran. Perhaps I was about seven.

I was eleven when my father gave me a Quran with English translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali as a gift. It was a marvelous gift. To this day, I have not seen a better translation. Before that, I did not know what was written as it was all in Arabic. Reading the Holy Book with translation opened its doors to me. My favorite time was reading the Quran after Fajr (morning prayers). Here, I confess sheepishly, I think as a child the stories fascinated me more than the religious aspect of it.

My childhood reading continued into adulthood. The Quran has always been my mentor, guiding me on the right path. Shukr Alhumdulillah (thanks and praise be to Allah) for giving me this Book. I would have been lost without it. Reading it has always been an uplifting experience for me. The Quran opens a person’s spiritual eyes. I always feel a sense of wonder,joy and elation. I feel truly blessed. There so many people who go through life unaware of what they are missing.

Like this:

I discovered books as a child. My mother died when I was about five years old. My siblings and I were divided among our relatives. The youngest one, who was ten days old, went to our maternal grandma. My ten-month-old sister went to my father’s mother. My father took my older brother (eight years older than me) along with him. My three-year-old brother and I went to live with my elder uncle. After a period of four months, when our father came to see us, I clung to him and refused to let him go without us. Baba (my father) took us with him but was unable to look after my kid brother as he was away from home a lot because of his army duties. Baba had to leave him with his mother.
I used to be alone in the house most of the time. Lala (my elder brother) would be out playing with his friends. That’s how I discovered books and found a totally different world from the world I lived in. It was a world of magic for me. Snow White, Cinderella and the Mermaid Princess became my friends. I came to know dragons, wizards and Greek Mythology. Hercules and Zeus came alive. When I would wake up, I would find books lying near my pillow, brought by Baba, and left for me. When I was in grade six, I think I finished reading all the books in our school library.
As I grew older most of my pocket money was spent on books. When I could not buy, my time was spent in bookstores. My younger brothers by that time had come to live with us and the three of us would be visiting the local bookshops on bicycles. My favorite authors at that time were Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen and Agatha Christie.
Alas! such a heavenly atmosphere could not last forever. My husband disliked books as much as I loved them. He only read his military books and newspapers. With my husband and two kids to look after, the world of books became a distant paradise.
Now with time on my hands, I have re-discovered my lost world. For me books are fun. My books are my companions. They were that in my childhood as they are now. I have to confess though I may go down a few notches in some people eyes but one of my favorite authors is Stephanie Meyer. I love her vampires and all, though I do not like the movies made so far based upon her books. My other faves are Suzanne Collins and Jodi Picoult.
My idea of bliss is to curl up with a book in a quiet place with no one disturbing me.